When Christian Vande Velde lines up for the opening stage of the Tour of Switzerland this weekend, the 30-year-old American will be thinking beyond the nine-day ProTour race. He wants to show his CSC team boss Bjarne Riis that he has the fitness, climbing form and all-around strength that will make him a valued support rider for Ivan Basso at next month’s Tour de France.

He certainly has the form, having won the Tour of Luxembourg last Sunday. Not only was that victory Vande Velde’s first win since he took California’s Redlands Classic in 1999 but it was also the first time he has won a pro race in Europe. Also, he is also only the second American to have won Luxembourg’s national tour, eight years after Lance Armstrong — whose team included Vande Velde.

“I was thinking about the ’98 race on my way to Luxembourg,” Vande Velde said earlier this week, as he returned with his family from a day out on a Costa Brava beach to his home in Gerona, Spain. “It was my very first stage race. Lance took the jersey on the first day and we rode tempo for the rest of the time. Me, Marty [Jemison], Tyler [Hamilton] and Frankie (Andreu], who won the final stage. And George [Hincapie] was there in the star-and-stripes; he’d just won Philly. We had a lot of fun.”

Eight years later, Vande Velde was on another team that was in charge — despite local Luxembourg star Kim Kirchen of T-Mobile winning the 2.6km prologue and defending the leader’s jersey with a second place on stage 1. “That first day was so cold, only 45 degrees and raining. It felt even colder because I’d come straight from Spain,” Vande Velde said. “I’ve never found myself wishing so much for a hill just so I could warm up.”

The American was hot the next day when CSC isolated Kirchen early with an aggressive move and then placed Vande Velde in a seven-man break 75km from the finish. The American ended up taking second place on the stage and moving to second overall, three seconds behind new race leader, Italian Marco Serpellini of Unibet.com.

“We had a strong team there and whoever ended up in that break was gonna be the team leader,” said Vande Velde, who took the yellow jersey on stage 3 when he was one of 14 riders who escaped 100km from the finish and carved out a 16-minute winning margin over the CSC-controlled pack.

“There was a tough finishing circuit every day, with at least one 2km hill,” Vande Velde continued. “I was very consistent. I felt strong and felt able to do things when I wanted to. I hope to do even better in Switzerland.”

Vande Velde knows he has to impress his team during this coming week if he is to be named among the eight riders who go to the Tour de France with Basso. It will be just as tough as it was to “qualify” for Armstrong’s Tour squad when he was with U.S. Postal. Vande Velde rode the Tour twice for Postal (in 1999 and 2001), and he rode it again two years ago when he was with the Liberty Seguros team of Roberto Heras.

Vande Velde played down the importance of making it onto Basso’s Tour team, recognizing that CSC “has such a stacked team.” On the other hand, he knows that after his Luxembourg win he is on the very best form of his nine-year pro career. And his previous grand-tour performances show that he’d be able to assist Basso on all types of terrain — on the flats, up the hills and in the mountains.

But CSC has an abundance of riches. For starters, there are the eight riders who assisted Basso in winning the Giro d’Italia last month: American Bobby Julich, Danes Michael Blaudzun and Niki Sørensen, Spaniards Carlos Sastre and Iñigo Cuesta, German Jens Voigt, Italian Giovanni Lombardi and Ukrainian Volodymir Gustov.

Other strong contenders for a place at the Tour are three team members who rode for CSC at last year’s race: American Dave Zabriskie, Australian Luke Roberts and Norwegian Kurt-Asle Arvesen. Also in the mix are riders who’ve all ridden previous Tours: Australian Stuart O’Grady, Austrian Peter Luttenberger, Dane Jakob Piil, Dutchman Karsten Kroon, Italian Andrea Peron, Swiss Fabian Cancellara — and Vande Velde. And then there’s the talented Luxembourger Fränk Schleck, who’d like to ride his first Tour.

If you put all these men together, as one of CSC’s directeurs sportif, Tristan Hoffman, told VeloNews’s Andy Hood on Thursday, CSC has enough talent to form two teams at the Tour. So it can be argued that Vande Velde doesn’t have much of a chance of making it to Strasbourg on July 1. But there are several points in his favor.

First, Vande Velde was scheduled to ride in CSC’s Giro team until he broke his collarbone (twice) in March, so Riis clearly values the American as a grand-tour rider. Second, those broken collarbones kept him out of competition until the Tour of Catalonia, May 15-21, so Vande Velde is much fresher than his teammates who completed a very grueling Giro. Then, of course, Vande Velde won his second race back.

Schleck, who was fourth in the 2005 Swiss tour, will likely be the CSC leader this time. If so, Vande Velde needs to show superior form to help the Luxembourg champion every day in Switzerland, particularly in the mountains. The last time that Vande Velde really showed that sort of climbing form was in the 2002 Vuelta a España, when he was with Postal.

That Vuelta saw Vande Velde pulling hard for team leader Heras on every mountain climb — an effort that helped the Spanish climber hold the leader’s golden jersey until the final day’s time trial. But going into that three-week grand tour, Vande Velde knew that, after a mediocre season, his place on the Postal team (perhaps even his whole career) was on the line.

But very early in the Vuelta, the team saw that Vande Velde was the “go-to guy” on the biggest climbs. Did he surprise himself? “For sure, yeah,” he replied. “My climbing really came along … and a lot more doors were open [for me] than I thought, after being defeated so many times … by injuries, sickness, whatever. It’s a big relief to have more confidence in yourself.

“[Postal] didn’t realize what I could do, so they didn’t want to put the pressure on me. I wasn’t expected to do great things in the mountains, because I’d never done them before.”

Now that he has done great things, and now that he’s healthy and on excellent form, Vande Velde could well be one of Basso’s “go-to guys” at the 2006 Tour de France.

CHRISTIAN VANDE VELDE’S GRAND TOUR RECORD1999 (U.S. Postal): Helped Armstrong win the Tour de France (85th overall).2000 (U.S. Postal): On coming back from a broken collarbone, he was named to the Tour team, but a spider bite on his rear end became infected days before the start and he was DNS. 2001 (U.S. Postal): Started the Tour, crashed in the team time trial, then crashed again on a descent in the Vosges mountains, breaking his radius bone. DNF. 2002 (U.S. Postal): Not selected for the Tour “because my form was behind the eight ball,” but rode strongly for Roberto Heras at the Vuelta (25th overall). 2003 (U.S. Postal): No Tour because he was suffering with back and leg problems most of the year. 2004 (Liberty Seguros): Rode the Tour for Heras, who was DNF. Vande Velde was 56th overall. 2005 (CSC): Raced for Ivan Basso at the Giro d’Italia (114th) and for Carlos Sastre at the Vuelta (32nd). 2006 (CSC): Missed the Giro because of a twice broken collarbone; on the team’s long list for the Tour.